Daily Archives: November 5, 2006

Today I discovered that while I’m not too keen on playing for audiences, I can play instruments to cameras.

This is messing around with a double-flute (a couple of pennywhistles stuck together at an angle), while a cat tries to interfere:

There’s only about four or five notes (plus another octave of same) on a double flute because you have only one hand for each pennywhistle, etc. And it’s not what I’m used to playing. But I had fun with it. One side can be played as a regular pennywhistle, and I do that more often than I play it double like I did in that video.

If the next video returns an error, wait awhile and try again.

That one is me playing a regular flute. I had a tiny bit of instruction a long time ago, and I was not too great at it. I certainly couldn’t improvise or anything. I picked it up more than a decade later (post-so-called-“regression” and all that, too, so with skills totally rearranged) and suddenly could play, but only if I improvised stuff. So that’s what I’m doing in that video. It’s not the only style I improvise in, but I don’t really pick the style as I’m doing it (nor even know the names of the styles), and I don’t know what it’s going to sound like until I play, so that’s what came out this time around.

These are the sort of skills I meant, a long time ago, when I was describing things I can do that I don’t generally do around people, and that tend to impress people (sometimes more than is deserved, by contrast with assumptions about abilities, and so forth) but that don’t actually make me any more capable, say, around the house or anything.